Chapter Dream
[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]
Friday 20th November 1998
I’ve had all sorts of dreams in my 16-and-a-half years. “Living in a house that isn’t my house” dreams, “I’ve forgotten to do my Maths homework!” dreams, flying dreams, dreams where my teeth fall out, dreams with five acts that don’t seem to connect in any meaningful way, even the odd nightmare. And yet despite being a teenage boy with a healthy sexual appetite (yes, and a kink, I might manage to live that down), I’ve never really had lewd dreams.
Until now, anyway.
It started innocently enough. I was on that new quiz show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? The Fastest Finger First round was some question about pineapples, I think… in any case, I won, and Chris Tarrant lead me to the hotseat, and then it wasn’t Chris Tarrant but Dakota in a bikini and that seat felt a hundred times hotter.
She was asking me questions – one after the other, before I could even give an answer – and I couldn’t concentrate because it’s impossible to concentrate when a cute girl is wearing a bikini right in front of you, smirking cutely like she knows she has you in the palm of her hand and that neither of you would want it any other way.
Then I somehow won £1,000 and she straddled me.
When I woke up, I could still remember the feeling of her thighs against mine, her hands holding my shoulders, her face and lips so close. It was all still burning in my mind where the dream had been branded with white-hot fantasy. It stayed with me as I got ready for school, as I made the journey there, and even though it gradually sank away to the back of my mind during my first two classes, seeing Dakota at break immediately brought it all surging back.
It was there that guilt came into the mix, much more prominently than before.
Firstly, I suddenly felt bad for having dreamt of her in such a compromising fashion. I know it wasn’t the real her, but to have the image of her in nothing but a bikini… as much as it was a turn-on, it was a fairly intimate thing to conjure up. It sort of felt like I’d stripped her without her permission. And besides, at this point it looked like she’d wind up with Ricardo, or at the very least that he was much more her type than me.
Which is what made Kayleigh’s question during Music utterly bewildering.
“How long have you and the Irish girl been dating?”
“How long what and who did what now?”
“You. The brunette you’re always flirting with. How long’s it been?”
She looked back to her textbook after that, but continued on:
“I heard she only joined at the start of the year, did you work fast or did you only start going out last week or something?”
“I- Who told you we were going out?!”
I was meant to be reading too, but the topic was so big – so bizarre, to me – that I couldn’t focus on anything else.
“You can’t tell me it’s meant to be a secret,” she frowned at the book. “You’d have to be blind to miss it.”
“It’s not even- we’re not! Why would we be going out?!”
“Fuckin’ hell, volume control!”
A wince and a glare combined as she looked to me again.
“Sorry…” I half-whispered back, out of awkwardness as much as respecting her wishes.
“You’re seriously not dating her?” the new girl asked incredulously.
“Why is that so surprising?”
Looking back, I really sounded defensive there.
“I’m me and there’s a tonne of other guys in this school she could go out with…”
“You don’t get girls at all,” she replied flatly, shaking her head as if to underline her point before going back to her book. “Besides, you always look like you’re flirting with each other.”
It might surprise you that I’d already run out of shocked and dismissive reactions.
“Well, I mean… we’re not…”
“Sure,” came her entirely unimpressed response.
“We’re not!” I insisted, feeling like this was a battle I was managing to lose.
“Why did I ask…?” Kayleigh muttered beneath her breath, raising her eyes to the ceiling before turning them to me. “You might not think you’re flirting, and she might not think she’s flirting either, but… and hear me out… you’re flirting.”
I huffed through my nose, my turn now to be unimpressed, and looked away.
“You’re so stubborn, god… this is my first week here and I can see it so clearly that I thought you were already a couple. Just from seeing the two of you hanging out once or twice. It’s like a massive neon sign saying ‘we wanna jump each other’s bones and fuck like bunnies’, and you could ask anybody in our year – hey, sod it, anybody in Year 13 too – and they’d say the same thing.”
Bullshit.
I really wish I’d said it out loud, but… absolute bullshit.
You know me by now (and if you don’t know me by now… okay, no, I won’t do the obvious Simply Red reference). I’m weird. I’m awkward. My hair’s a mess. I’m plain and odd-looking and I collect Transformers, and until I somehow wound up with a weird sword powered by creativity itself, I had basically two friends (and now I have six). I’m not into parties and my main talent is playing the piano.
Why would any girl, never mind somebody like Dakota, be interested in me? I don’t have anything that other guys don’t have (unless you count the Transformers, which are, of course, a well-known aphrodisiac). I don’t make Dakota all giggly like Ricardo does. I went to confess to Melody once and she’s been horrible to me ever since. Maybe – maybe, I’ll wilfully concede – I’ve been flirting unintentionally. At the very least, I might be acting in a way that makes it obvious (to Kayleigh if not other people) that I’m into Dakota. But there’s no way Dakota’s into me like that. We’re close, but we’re friends, and I’m sure she has better taste in boys than the likes of me. Whatever Kayleigh thinks she’s seeing there, she’s wrong.
“No arguments?” Kayleigh smirked at me. “Case closed.”
I just groaned a little while finally trying to return my focus back on the textbook. A photo of a dark-haired lady looking at some artwork of an orchestra caught my eye and suddenly Dakota’s nearly-naked body emerged in my head again. No, push it away, I decided. Wasted thoughts.
…
When the five of us arrived at Dakota’s, Saoirse was in the middle of baking. Well, she’d prepared the mixture, that’s not strictly “the middle”, but all the same.
“Oh man, we’re having cake?” Kendal grinned at the sight.
“Eventually, yes.”
Saoirse surveyed her work to that point, and took off her apron.
“Need to get confectioner’s sugar, though. It completely slipped my mind. I’ll put this in to bake and go and buy some.”
She looked to us – specifically Bao, Kendal and me, who were crowding the door – and then looked past us, into the living room where Dakota and Zahid were settling down.
“Dakota, you can come with me.”
“Okay…?” Dakota replied. “Do you need me to come with you…?”
“You’re interrupting homework time,” Bao warned Saoirse gravely; her eyes flicked to him as he spoke, and she smiled a little, before snapping straight back to Dakota.
“I’d like you to,” she clarified, before taking the mixture and opening up the oven. Like with Kayleigh earlier, it seemed that she considered the conversation over.
“I mean…”
Dakota sounded genuinely at a loss for a moment. When I turned, I found her looking between her school bag and her mother with indecision all over her face.
“Sure…” she finally conceded, shoulders drooping.
“Aaaay, we’re off the hook!” Kendal hollered.
“And off the chain!” Bao added inexplicably. The two of them high-fived behind me, and then pushed me forward, because Saoirse had put the cake in the oven and was now heading through the space we’d been occupying.
“I’m trusting the four of you to keep an eye on the cake,” the adult told us with a firm but fair stare, stopping in her stride for a moment so that it would land properly.
“I’ve baked before, I’ll handle it,” Bao assured her with more nonchalance than I think I’d ever heard from him, to the extent that I could’ve seen him patting her on the back if I couldn’t also see her breaking his arm off if he tried.
“Good, good, thank you” Saoirse nodded, stare relaxing into a smile as she headed off to the front hall. Dakota trudged after her, and stopped to look at the rest of us.
“The rest of you, keep an eye on Bao,” she urged us.
“I’d rather do homework,” Zahid grumbled, “it’s easier.”
“Come on, this is a responsibility, I can handle that,” Bao swore to Dakota, hand on heart.
“Okay,” she nodded. “Homework when we get back, got it?”
“It’s a deal,” I chuckled a little, giving her a thumbs-up.
Apparently satisfied, Dakota continued off after her mother, and a moment later, they were out of the front door.
“Okay, before I go and keep an eye on the cake,” Bao began with his priorities in questionable order, “why’ve you been blushing every time you look at Dakota today?”
It took me a second to realise he was addressing me.
“I haven’t been!” I found myself saying.
“Why would you say that when we all know nobody can see their own cheeks…?” Zahid asked from the armchair; he seemed to be forcing back a “gotcha” smirk in an effort to keep his face cool and neutral.
“Yeah, don’t deny it,” Kendal added, heading for the sofa and all but throwing herself on it. “We all saw it!”
“Well, it didn’t feel like I was blushing…” I muttered, trying to cling to any point I could.
“So, come on, what happened? Did you have a sexy dream about her or something?” Bao interrogated me.
I don’t know what the hell I did – what facial expression I pulled, or what body language I conveyed – but within a second, a great big grin broke out on Bao’s face.
“Got it in one!” he cheered, punching the air.
“Niiice,” Zahid approved with a genuine grin.
“Tell us all the juicy details!” Kendal implored, shifting from her sprawled position to sit up eagerly.
“In what world…?”
I realised after those three words that I was setting myself up for a losing battle. I sighed.
“I was on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, I won Fastest Finger First, and then the host was Dakota but she was wearing a bikini. And when I won £1,000, she came over and straddled me.”
I’m not sure what reaction would’ve been ideal, but I’ll tell you now, the silence that followed was probably the worst one I could’ve expected.
“That’s it?” Kendal finally asked indignantly.
“What d’you mean…?”
“That’s… a bit dry, man…” Zahid huffed.
“I’ve had hotter dreams about girls!” Kendal snapped.
“You’re a lesbian, you having hot dreams about girls isn’t some big surprise…” my taller friend pointed out to her.
“Still!”
“Sorry, if I knew it was a competition I would’ve had a hotter dream…” I glared somewhat at the two of them.
“I think it’s sweet,” Bao declared. “He only got £1,000, but he scored the jackpot.”
With that, he headed into the kitchen.
“That is sweet…” Kendal mused, rubbing her chin a little.
“I know it’s not like we were… fucking like bunnies…”
I cursed myself internally for that term being the one to come to mind. Thanks, Kayleigh…
“But just seeing her like that, and feeling her legs and her being so close… the intimacy of it…”
“He’s blushing again, Bao,” Zahid reported, voice raised just a little to make sure it reached the kitchen.
“Nice!”
I rubbed my cheeks as if that would do anything.
“One day you’re gonna dream something really sexual and you’re not even gonna be able to look at Dakota…” Kendal prophesised solemnly.
“Firstly, I’ve only just had this one, let’s not start lining up more…” I winced at her.
“I’m just saying,” she shrugged.
“And I think I’d still be able to look at her,” I lied, considering how readily this dream kept popping back into my mind and apparently causing me to blush.
“You’d melt the second she looked at you,” Zahid asserted, looking at me with accusing eyes.
“Okay, maybe. I dunno,” I grunted. “A lot of it is guilt. Is that normal?”
Kendal and Zahid looked to each other, and I really couldn’t read their expressions in that moment.
“It can be…” Kendal started, “but then I’ve never had somebody I’ve been proper head-over-heels in love with to have a sexy dream about… I guess that makes it different?”
“Probably,” Zahid considered. “Hey Bao, did you ever had a sexual dream about Harriet before you started dating?”
No immediate response. I stepped over to peer through the kitchen door, and found Bao squatting in front of the oven, staring at the cake through the window.
“I don’t think so,” he finally replied. “But then there was only a week or two before we got together.”
“Anyway, it’s natural,” Zahid told me. “You’ve got her in your head, and you want her. I get it might feel weird to dream something up, but it’s your subconscious telling you what you want. The only cure is to ask her out.”
“Mhm…”
I didn’t really want to discuss that possibility, considering that it wasn’t a possibility at all as far as I was concerned.
“You’ll find the chance,” Kendal smiled at me. “And until you do, you’re gonna keep having dreams about her, so enjoy them!”
“And you’ll probably have dreams about her after you ask her out, too,” Bao added from the kitchen. “I had this dream about Harriet the other night and- y’know, it’s funny, that involved cakes too…”
“You should see the face he’s pulling, Bao!” Kendal laughed, at which point I made sure nobody could see whatever face I was pulling by hiding it behind my hands. That only elicited more laughter.
“Get used to it, Alex,” I heard Zahid say, “she’s in your dreams for the long haul.”
“It’s fine, I know CPR, if he ever passes out from being around Dakota I’ll be on the case!” Kendal remarked with an audible grin.
Fortunately, the topic changed quickly enough, and before Bao, Kendal and Zahid could make too many stealthy quips about dreams and bikinis, Dakota and Saoirse returned. The five of us teens finally set about completing our homework, while Saoirse took over in the kitchen, thanking Bao for supervising the cake (he’d genuinely been on top of things, which was both cool and comforting).
“She wanted to test you,” Dakota whispered to the rest of us, so quietly and almost tensely that I really felt she feared her mother’s reaction if she heard.
“What…?” Zahid furrowed his brow.
“To make sure you’re reliable. If you screw up a cake, you can’t handle the responsibility of the weapons or something.”
She didn’t seem impressed, twiddling her pen lightly between her fingers.
“She was checking she can trust you all with me, I guess.”
“So, she’s being a mum,” I concluded, smiling (and probably blushing) at Dakota.
“Your mum does weird stuff,” Bao chimed in.
“No, that’s not what I-”
A scoff of a laugh interrupted me, and we all wound up laughing at basically nothing.
After we finished our homework, we enjoyed Saoirse’s Irish tea cake and chatted away for a while, until it was time to go home. The dream kept emerging in my mind all the while, now tied with the others’ words about needing to confess… would I really be plagued by dreams like this (I mean, “plagued” makes it sound entirely negative, it’s not like I didn’t enjoy the dream itself) unless something finally happened between us? What if she got with Ricardo, or some other guy? Would I find myself having horny dreams of Dakota on a regular basis with no way to stop them?
Maybe the others were right, or maybe pondering all this as I fell asleep set me up for it, but that night, I had a dream so much steamier than the last that I’m never going to write it down.